Lights Out

Aly's text to her hookup lands in the masked man's hands

Aly is a trauma nurse burning through double shifts at a city hospital, numbing herself to blood and loss with wine and social media.

Aly's text to her hookup lands in the masked man's hands

Aly is a trauma nurse burning through double shifts at a city hospital, numbing herself to blood and loss with wine and social media. Her obsession: a masked thirst trap creator she calls the Faceless Man, whose shirtless videos drenched in fake blood have hijacked her algorithm for months. After her casual hookup Tyler stops texting back, she screenshots her favorite video and sends it, asking him to wear a mask next time. Tyler shows the screenshot to his roommate Josh, who freezes: those are his tattoos, his body, his secret account. Josh spends hours combing thousands of comments until he finds Aly's profile. She's liked and commented on nearly every video he's ever posted. His obsession begins where hers has been building for months.

Josh breaks in, films a video, and leaves a calling card

After a week of lock-picking practice and neighborhood reconnaissance, Josh triggers a blackout and slips through Aly's back door. Her cat Fred, instead of attacking, butts against his shin and purrs—the first animal Josh has ever touched without fearing some inherited urge to hurt it. He films a thirst trap in Aly's bedroom mirror, his shirtless reflection framed by her dresser and belongings, then props his custom mask against her pillows. He plants a spy camera disguised as a phone charger before relocking the door and triggering a second blackout to cover his escape. When Aly comes home and flicks on her bedroom light, she clears every room with a loaded gun. She recognizes the mask instantly. The man she's lusted over for months was standing where she sleeps.

She finds his hidden camera but refuses to involve police Aly sends the Faceless Man a DM asking if he broke into her house. He responds—the first time he's replied to anyone online—with a question: what would she do if he said yes? He sends her an explicit video filmed on her comforter, and she masturbates to it instead of calling the police, burying whatever evidence his presence left beneath her own. Over the following days, she discovers his hidden camera using a detector he sent alongside deadbolt reinforcements and an entire home security system. She confronts the lens, threatening to find him. He follows her account publicly, making her the only person he follows. His comment sections erupt. Instead of dialing 911, Aly calls Tyler and asks if his computer-genius roommate can track someone online. She enters a…